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He Said, She Said – Recaps for 9/21/17

A few days ago a young child was seriously injured in Yankee Stadium when a hard line drive struck her in the face. This was after the Yankees have for years refused to extend safety netting that would in zero way impact fan views of the game. Just yesterday the Reds, Padres, Mariners, and Rockies announced plans to expand protective netting. While yes, part of the fault is on families to ensure they are not only aways aware of their surroundings, and to ensure that small children are sitting in safer seating, part of the onus here is on the teams who have had easy, relatively cheap solutions for years, and failed to act. MLB has always been incredibly slow to act in matters of safety, refusing to adapt to the time, stuck in the old way of doing things, and it’s about time for all of that to change.

Twins 12, Tigers 1 – Prof: Who to please, Spartan or Happy? Sorry, Sparty, but Happy is my bro and Minneapolis went double digits, and they did it all without a home run, so of course I’m gonna talk about that. T.C. Bear and Company now lead the AL Wild Card by 2 1/2 games! Holy cats. Paul Molitor is doing good work this season.

Cubs 5, Brewers 3 F/10 – Scouts: Ouch, this one really hurt. After rallying for a run in each the 7th and 8th innings to take a 3-2 lead, the Brew Crew blew it in the 9th when Javier Baez, down the to the Cub’s final strike laced a RBI single to tie the game. Kris Bryant then stepped up in the 10th to smash a two-run homer and maybe it just isn’t Milwaukee’s year after all.

White Sox 3, Astros 1 – Scouts: All signs pointed to a easy Houston victory. They had their ace Dallas Keuchel going up against a rookie who left the game in the first due to a blister on his finger. They were on a 6 game winning streak and facing a not very good White Sot team. But that’s why you only bet with house money.

Rockies 0, Padres 3 – Scouts: Yet another playoff team is faltering as we enter the final stretch of the season. These are the games you just have to win if you are Colorado, who have now dropped 4 straight.

Dodgers 5, Phillies 4 – Prof: The Dodgers won! Sad that it’s news now that one of the best, winningest teams in all of baseball have stunk so much lately. Los Angeles ends a four game losing streak by being just better than the lowly Philadelphia Phillies.

Rays 1, Orioles 3 – Prof: One never knows what they are going to get when the Baltimore Orioles take the field. Ynoa what I mean? (I’m sorry, fam. I’ll see myself out now.) Anyway, Gabriel Ynoa pitched eight really good innings and Manny Machado hit a two run dinger to gain the win.

Royals 1, Blue Jays 0 – Prof: Hard to believe that after such a butt kicking on Wednesday, the Royals could only be able to score one run. But one was all they needed, as Jason Vargas and a rested bullpen shutout the Blue Jays. Former Braves great Mike Minor gets the save!

Cardinals 8, Reds 5 – Scouts: The win coupled with both Milwaukee and Colorado’s recent stumbling and bumbling brings the Cards to just a game and a half back of the last Wild Card spot.

Nationals 2, Braves 3 –Prof: The best among us will rise to the occasion. Even when you are getting old, and your best really isn’t all that great anymore, sometimes you’ll find that strength within and remind people of what you’re capable of. R.A. Dickey isn’t what he used to be, but he reminded us of what makes him an interesting and compelling figure in modern baseball, with a sharp knuckler that confused and confounded the Nats for eight innings. The Nats tried it, but Arodys Vizcaino was able to redeem himself from a blown save the other night by retiring the side. It appeared that in the ninth, Nobody Beat the Viz. (MORE PUNS. ALL THE PUNS.)

Rangers 4, Mariners 2 – Scouts: See, now this is how you fight for a Wild Card spot! The Rangers win yet again, this time off a very strong performance by Cole Hamels, who allowed just one run in 7 innings. Shin-Soo Choo and Adrian Beltre hit homers as Texas completed the sweep.

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17 thoughts on “He Said, She Said – Recaps for 9/21/17”

Since he returned from the DL on August 28, Jayson Werth’s slash line is .123/.190/.228 over 16 games, 63 plate appearances. He looks done at the moment, but the Nats keep running him out there in the hopes he’ll find it before next month. Meanwhile, future star OF Victor Robles, who’s allegedly under consideration for a post-season roster spot, and who had us all excited after going 2-4 with a triple against the Barves last Thursday, has not seen the field since, save for accidentally taking a position in the outfield in the bottom of the 8th last night.

About that, the Nats had decided to play their regulars for as long as Tanner Roark had a shot at winning the game last night, but after he was removed for a pinch hitter in the top of the 8th, the Nats went full spring training mode and damn near subbed out everyone. Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication surrounding things, something about Sammy Solis taking the mound too soon to pitch the 8th, and so a few planned substitutions couldn’t happen, so after jogging out to play CF, Victor then had to jog back into the dugout, and so he didn’t get to play again.

Dusty says all the regulars will sit tonight, after yet another 7:30PM start to a game on Getaway “Day”, so maybe Robles will finally get another opportunity.

I checked the NL standings and it does look like your boys are being smart by resting key people instead of pursuing the slim hope of catching the Dodgers for best record. In terms of seasonal win lost and runs differential the Diamondbacks look like a tougher matchup then the Cubbies. Good luck, assuming that the 1 to 5 percent chance that there will be world series games played in Minnesota this year does not occur.

I think it’s dangerous to assume that the Dbacks will automatically win the one-game WC playoff. Will they clearly be the better WC team? Sure, but anything can happen in the shortest of short series…

That aside, it’s almost certain to be Nats/Cubs in one of the NLDS, with the Nats having home field advantage, so the Nats will have to get through them and whoever comes out of the Dodgers/WC series to have any chance of meeting the Senators v1.0.

Yesterday was a day to rank right up there with Buddha’s birthday (in his most recent incarnation, I mean – this is no jataka tale). Yes, AT&T finally got our internet service up and running at home after 15 days of unpixelated silence. (Of course, they sent us a bill for a full month of service, which we are returning duly annotated. Sure hope they have some petroleum jelly sitting around somewhere.)

So, in the immortal words of Jack Nicholson, “Honey, I’m home.

I still have quite a bit of yard work to do today – raking, sawing, bagging, dumping, piling cut branches out front for Macondo Sanitation and Waste Promulgation to remove whenever their big clamshell-and-dumptruck tandems finally reach the boondocks. So, because I have my son here to help an old man out today, I will settle in with a steaming cup of fresh ground Galapagos coffee with a shot of coconut rum creme and keep this brief but should be back up to speed tomorrow.

One of the few merciful aspects of being discommunicated for most of the last few weeks (excluding my brief trip to New York) was that I missed the Feesh’s swan dive from the high board of wild card competition into the empty swimming pool of the inevitable rebuilding program Beep Beep and his entourage seem prepared to inflict. The last time I saw a slide like that it was in newsreel footage of the Mount St. Helens’ lahar. I’d been sort of paying attention to the Iron Giant’s progress up the Sixty Ladder but also must acknowledge that his MVP chances took a vicious hit when he and the team went cold as Ted Williams’ paperweight head through the first half of September and he lost close to twenty points of BA while his dinger parade slowed to blocking intersections. From a safe distance it looks like when it really counted he went flat as a Mercator projection and dragged down the whole team (at one schmear they went 2-11). Of course this is only slightly true: the whole team was the culprit with the possible exception of Dee Gordon, who will prolly pay for his cheek by being traded in a Beep Beep salary dump this orfseason. Most egregious, as usual, was the pitching staph, especially the Rainbow Warriors’ execrable boolpen. Even in Arizona, the Feesh scored 24 runs in two games while giving up something like 18 and going 1-1 to show for it to a team that, I think, is (like the city where it plays) pretty boring even if they’re pretty good – like, uh, Cleveland.

I doubt it’ll happen but my formula for getting a good night’s sleep in October is an Arizona-Cleveland World Series: I’ll call it the Hydrological Series, a faceorf between a poisoned river and a disappearing aquifer. Like, wow.

Oh yes, and a sidenote on comments made by that ambulatory sack of excrement in the White House while basking in the adulation of his rabble in America’s perpetual backwater sump, Alabama, where the Civil War ain’t over yet and the only good fag is a dead fag, where he had gone to intercede in a Reslugnican senate primary contest between two rancid fundamentalist bigots and homophobes, about keeping sports real by protecting every American’s sacred right to brain damage: let’s get rid of the safety nets altogether!

Well, I will say this much tonight: it was good to see the Chihuahua further humiliated while Beep Beep made himself look like a slob. Anyone who could make the Chihuahua an even minimally sympathetic figure is a sitting duck for the spawrtsriters. I smell a de casibus narrative a-borning.